The ending nearly gave me a heart attack with Lyon. Meanies. I'm not entirely convinced by having the ghosts of some of the bad guys clustered around the Prince patting him on the back for destroying them, but otherwise a very satisfying ending. They should have made Haswar the Oracle the official regent, but I guess she would decline.

There's two things in the opening credits that puzzle me. One is a flashback showing how Lyon was found and adopted by Ferid. Did I miss something, or does that flashback never occur in game? The other is a scene in which Lyon and the prince (or Roy?) fight a duel. I kept expecting some sort of Nether Gate mind control, or even a Rune, to cause Lyon to turn against the Prince.

It's taking me a while to figure out Sialeeds. I get the fact that she was trying to bring down both the Godwins and Barrows herself, because (a) she wasn't convinced her sweet-natured nephew had the guts to do the dirty work and (b) she was afraid Lym and Prince-boy would get the same negative publicity Arshtat did for nuking Lordlake if the new queen's reign started with a bloodbath of noble families. So Sialeeds took the fall.

What I'm puzzled about is how Dolph the Creepy Assassin Guy figures into all this. Sialeeds obviously began having second thoughts when Puppet Queen Lym tried to end the war by leading a poorly-planned attack hoping to get captured by the "rebels". Okay, so Sialeeds didn't want the war to end early, with the Godwins and Barrows still intact and a threat for the future. Check. But Dolph shows up at the Prince's castle that night and talks to Sialeeds. Had she been in contact with him all this time? Or -- my first impression -- did he bring some news to her that caused her to break with the prince?

My thought was that maybe he told her what the Godwins were planning to do with the Sun Rune (in fact, in light of Georg's killing the queen to stop the Sun Rune from nuking the Queendom, I thought perhaps Sialeeds' betrayal had something to do with stopping the Sun Rune as well). Anyway, I like the ambiguity.

Incidentally, akycha and HC: remember how you told me not to let Roy do anything stupid? I never saw an opportunity to let him be stupid. Could this have something to do with the divergent plot arc where I chose to abandon the castle instead of defending it?

I figured that the game designers would not have forgotten the castle could be flooded if the enemy occupied it. Lucretia certainly wouldn't forget; she'd already used flood control in several previous battles, and the whole castle/lake setup looked rather Isengard-ish. (although I actually named it Minas Anor, "Tower of the Sun." )